


Around Midnight

by Anna_Blume



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Missing Scene, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:29:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24893176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Blume/pseuds/Anna_Blume
Summary: “It’s June. My name is June,” she told him. The words crawled out of her lips of their own volition, she just opened her mouth. Was it an act of self-preservation or self-destruction?"A mix of 1x5 and 1x6 missing scenes, June's vacillating thoughts regarding Nick, their emerging connection, and what it might mean to her.
Relationships: Nick Blaine/June Osborne | Offred
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	Around Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Several stories have been published here recently (~4 months still counts as recently, right?), which dove deeper into the early season 1 and/or into June and Nick's heads/thoughts at that time. These stories got my wheels turning and well, there you go. 
> 
> I'm not a native speaker, so the grammar's probably limping and the language is certainly far from perfect, but I hope the story works nonetheless.

“It’s June. My name is June,” she told him. The words crawled out of her lips of their own volition, she just opened her mouth. Was it an act of self-preservation or self-destruction?  


She told him because he was always so nonchalantly composed, even now, as if it barely cost him any effort to play his role. It irritated her no end. Will _this_ push him a little bit off balance?  


She told him because she needed someone to know. Otherwise, she would dissolve into nothingness. Sugar in water. Paper lantern let loose. Maybe not today, but eventually. Soon. And who else would care? Rita might care. But she’s too scared of the Commander. Of both of the Waterfords, actually. She would be putting her in danger.  


She told him because it would be safe with him. He maybe knew it already from some red folder marked “classified.” She wasn’t “top secret.” But there was a saying before - Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. This will keep him closer. She needed someone closer. He knew now, and she knew that he did. It worked both ways. Like what happened the other night... and it worked so well the other night.  


So yes, her name would be safe with him. This little word, which somehow contained every facet of her being in four letters and the space between them. She remembered writing it down in endless rows on her very first yellow legal pad, sitting on her heels at the coffee table in the living room. A string of crooked, wobbly lines, which began her existence. The first time she fully understood that she was a fundamentally separate, singular being. That she was her own.  


She told him because she didn’t want the Commander here, between them.  


He froze. Turned around slowly, and the refrigerator door fell shut with a crystal clunk. It took him nothing but a blink of an eye to find balance again. How was he so good at this? It was a reflex, a well-trained muscle, she guessed. A tool in his Gilead survival kit. She saw him fight it when he walked towards her, unhurriedly, the glass of water in his hand, his body a sharp silhouette illuminated from behind, his face darkened by the shadow.  


Was she wrong? Will he report her? Or will he tell her not to be so stupid again?  


He stepped closer, into the light again. “It’s nice to meet you, June,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.  


It sounded alien, her name formed by someone else’s mouth, uttered with such reverence. Her brain needed a moment to process the sound and the expression etched in his features. His Gilead mask was off, the seriousness with which he took her revelation unambiguous in his eyes.  


Somewhere in the highly pressurized balloon of her body a small leak appeared, a tear in the fabric of her loneliness. She wasn’t contained anymore, sealed off. A part of her was now inside him, the four letters taking root in the coils of his mind. The connection felt bare and intimate, and as much terrifying as it was liberating. She looked away, suddenly feeling exposed.  


He moved closer, cupping her face in his hand. His lips touched her forehead in a gentle kiss, as if to say, _Thank you._ As if to say, _I’m sorry for this hell._ And she trusted him now a bit more than before. Another piece of herself she gave to him - and she thought she had nothing left to give.  


If they hang her, so be it.  


“Can I have some tea instead?” she asked, looking down at the glass of water still in his hand.  


“Yeah,” he answered, letting his palm linger on her cheek a little longer before he turned towards the kitchen.  


She wiped away her tears with her fingers, rubbed them into her palms. It didn’t feel right to sit down right there on the bed, so she went over to the bench where she found him on earlier, in the darkest corner of his apartment, it seemed. An odd place to read, too. The book was wedged under the pillow, folded open. She pulled on the corner that was sticking from under the fabric and the pages fluttered shut with a familiar rustle. She flipped through countless books before, but now the sound reminded her of cards tumbling on the screen when you won in Solitaire.  


_Love in the Time of Cholera._ Fitting, wasn’t it? The disease part, anyways. In this place, it bore another name, but it was just as lethal. She’s read the book twice before. Once for school, once for pleasure. She wasn’t the biggest fan of magical realism, but the language was compelling, it had a weight, a heaviness she found oddly appealing.  


His edition was one of the early ones, battered and bent out of shape, spine cracked in several places. She opened the book on a random spot and noticed little marks on the margins made with a pencil, further beyond the point where he bookmarked his current progress. He must have read it before. More than once, from the look of it.  


She browsed through the pages, her eyes skipping from one little mark to the other, seeking out the lines he found significant. The first one read: “It was a lone voice in the middle of the ocean, but it was heard at great depth and great distance.” A different one was: “She had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love.” And then: “The girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.” Her cheeks felt hot.  


The room was completely quiet. The water in the kettle stopped boiling. She looked up and saw him leaning back against the kitchen sink, his hands gripping the enamel edge, his face hidden in the shadow again. Her mouth went dry.  


“Earl Grey?” he asked, his voice low. “Or herbal?”  


“Earl Grey,” she answered, closing the cover. He turned around, looking for the tea container, and she exhaled quietly. Of course he didn’t care. It was just another secret they shared. “It’s an odd place to read,” she said after a beat. “Dark.”  


“I started before sunset. Too lazy to switch to the bed,” he murmured, his words cradled by the soft gush of water filling the mugs. “I usually read in bed,” he added, glancing at her over his shoulder.  


“I don’t believe you’re too lazy to do anything,” she said, stroking the worn surface of the front cover again. He was quiet walking over to her with the mugs, setting them down on the table, sitting down beside her. “Where did you get Earl Gray anyway?” she asked, looking up at him.  


“I uhm... traded.”  


“For?”  


“Fresh herbs.”  


“You stole from Serena’s garden?”  


One of his eyebrows inched higher and he could barely contain the smile that pulled at the corners of his lips. So proud of his little delinquency. She chuckled. This stupid smirk of his.  


The tea was perfect. He even added some honey. She closed her eyes against the dark, silky texture. And there was her mother, sitting across the table in her apartment, sipping tea from a white porcelain cup. And there she was in a gray cloak, her head wrapped in a dirty kerchief.  


“You okay?”  


“Yeah,” she answered, willing her tears away, along with the memory.  


She felt tired and grimy, inside and out. Her breath was stale against the mug when she blew at the steaming surface. Her eyes felt puffy, the pores of her face clogged with dried out tears and sebum. How many times has she cried in the last couple of days? How many layers of stress-sweat covered her skin? The ambassador, she counted down in her head. Scrabble match in Waterford’s study. The kiss she tried to scrub off with a toothbrush until her gums bled. The night she spent oscillating between acute lucidity and suffocating dreams. The dinner, the children, her own stupidity. _They want to trade us, dummy._ Underneath all the red and white, she felt heavy, and sticky, and ripe.  


“June?” he asked again. She opened her eyes at the sound. It felt better this time, not so alien anymore.  


“Just tired. I’m depressurizing, I guess.”  


“Go lie down,” he said, motioning to the bed with his chin, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and there was a new kind of warmth in his voice. He was trusting her more, too, she thought. But she shouldn’t stay. She shouldn’t start getting used to this. Because then, she would only want more. And in this place, wanting anything was too dangerous in and of itself.  


“No uhm… I should go, see if I can wash this day off.”  


“Someone could hear. There’s a shower here… if you want.”  


“Okay,” she said before she could think. Maybe she was a dummy after all. Maybe she was her own worst enemy.

\---

She kept her hair in a bun - it would take too long for it to dry. She actually moaned when the hot stream hit her chest, when she felt her muscles unclench. Her mood lifted as soon as her skin got cleaner, as though the grimy substances her own body produced weighted her down mentally as well.  


She lathered herself with the same kind of soap they gave her, only the last thing this particular bar touched was _his_ skin. In a way, it felt strangely erotic. Like when Meryl Streep fantasized about Clint Eastwood taking a shower in the same tub she was soaking herself in. When she saw that scene for the first time, the hairs on her forearms stood on end, electrified by such… capacity for intimacy? Need for connection? Vastness of solitude?  


She watched the bar glide on her skin. It felt good but not as good as his fingers. Then again, he was just a couple of feet away. If she called him… No. It can’t happen again.  


Sorry, June.  


Yet he refused to leave her thoughts. It was as if he’d already left a mark inside her. Actually, he’s been leaving marks inside her, layer upon layer, ever since that time he joked about tuna. Every time they caught a glimpse of each other, locked eyes for a fraction of a heartbeat, and then he disappeared around a corner or into a dark hallway, he left an invisible trail behind him, a thick smudge of energy tangible only to her, within her. Like when you see an airplane cut the sky and leave a cottony trail in its wake, the white streak still there even after the plane is long gone. Sometimes, she could still feel his energy when she lay in her bed at night.  


The tiny bathroom was hot and fogged with steam when she stepped out of the shower. Her skin was clammy and she was soon sweating from fighting to get all the layers of her undergarment on. She gave up on her dress and pulled on her sweatshirt instead. She flung the dress over her arm, hooked the bonnet on her finger, and opened the door.  


The blinds on the door and windows were closed, the tools on the table tidied up, the work lamp off, the bench empty. She found him on the bed, sitting up against the headboard, his legs stretched out, the book in his hands. He looked up at her silently.  


“It’s too damp in there to get dressed,” she said, wanting to explain her state of undress.  


“Yeah, it takes a while to air out,” he answered.  


She stood awkwardly in place because he just sat there, staring at her. “I’ll get some water,” she mumbled, walking over to the sink, where mugs and glasses were washed and lined up to dry. She took one, filled it with water from the jug from the fridge, and chugged it down.  


She should go.  


She rinsed the glass, put it back from where she took it, and turned to the table again, to where she’d hung her dress and bonnet over the back of a chair. He was standing right there. Avoiding his gaze, she walked over to reach for the bonnet, and he stepped back stiffly. She was halfway through putting it on when he finally spoke.  


“Stay awhile.”  


She stopped mid-movement when she felt him touch her elbow, his fingers barely there before they disappeared again. She felt like crying again. She felt like touching him like that.  


“Just to hang out. Nothing carnal,” he added.  


She snorted softly, shaking her head. He was good at this, dissolving the awkward tension. Making her feel like it wasn’t Gilead. Like they were barely out of their teens and still embarrassingly bad at flirting. _Going shopping? I just don't like tuna very much. You shouldn’t wear anything for me._ A recollection popped up in her head, of his bony hips between her legs, of his heat inside her, of his hungry, deliberate mouth on hers. He was good at _that_ , too.  


“What time is it?” she asked just to say something, knowing already she‘d stay, no matter how late it was. Who the fuck was she kidding.  


“Around midnight.”  


She took the bonnet off and put it back together with the dress.  


“Come on,” he pulled on the edge of her sleeve and she followed him to the bed, where he climbed on top of the blankets and moved to the side, sitting up against the headboard, making room for her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and slid over to him. He reached his arm around her, but there was nothing awkward or juvenile about his gesture anymore.  


“That ok?” he murmured so close to her ear his breath tickled the little loose hair right around it, sending a shiver down the back of her neck, stirring molecules in the dark, distant corners of her body. Instead of answering, she moved closer, resting her back against his side, and he adjusted, curling around her, kissing the top of her shoulder over the red cloth of her sweatshirt. She closed her eyes, her muscles unclenching again, her body sinking into his embrace.  


She remembered a day at campus ten, no, twelve years before. It must have been May, because the sun shone hotly like in summer, but the wind was still icy, like in spring. Moira and she stopped at a square where a guy was advertising newspaper subscriptions, someone Moira knew from high school. She held back, letting the two talk, and suddenly the fresh gust embraced her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. She stood there, unmoving, because the wind felt like touch, smooth but firm, sneaking under her shirt with cool fingers, exhaling against the hair at the back of her neck, tickling her freshly shaved calves. The current saturated her skin, sank deep into her bones. Just as his touch did now. Just as it has the other night, after he finished cleaning himself up and slid back under the covers behind her.  


That other night, he rested his cheek on the cooling plane of her back and drew his fingers quietly over the skin of her shoulder. His touch was just tender, it had nothing sexual in it, nothing erotic, yet after a while, her skin was charged, covered in goosebumps. That energy suddenly felt new and overwhelming. It circled through her, gaining voltage, her body heavy like air before a storm. She wanted to feel it all over, but then she didn’t know what to do with it, so eventually, she let it turn erotic.  


She snuck her hand behind her and over his buttock then, and the sensations multiplied. His damp skin adhered to hers. His pillowy lips kissed along the edge of her shoulder blade. The cool breeze of his exhales rolled down her spine. The solid warmth of his arousal wedged itself between the cheeks of her ass. The wide span of his palm rubbed her breasts, the soft pouch of her belly. She felt everything with acute, overwhelming intensity, as though for the first time, ever. Her orgasm blushed on her skin in rosy patches as it bloomed from inside her almost instantly when he pushed in, when he glided only a handful of times over the slick spot where the nerve ends of her whole body came into a bundle, like a bottom of a bouquet.  


She was more in control of her reaction now as her skin registered a different form of touch than the one made by her clothes, or Serena’s cold fingers. Her nerve ends almost sang when he drew his thumb lazily over her forearm as if her skin were too bare, too absorbent, too raw. This time, she didn’t let the feeling overwhelm her. Instead, it made her aware of the lack she was forced to endure - the lack of this kind of touch, this kind of affection. Of how she‘d separated herself from her body. Of how successful the Aunts have been with dulling down her needs, anesthetizing her through beatings and humiliation. She knew the reason now.  


Gilead has been a steadily progressing, enclosing darkness around her for so long, that her self-awareness compressed into a pearl buried in the deep tissue of the alienated body, inside the hard shell of her regime-conform exterior. She was supposed to dissolve inside that body, become the body itself. The sick minds behind Gilead knew how the simple act of touch, of being held, could be transforming. How sometimes you needed to see yourself reflected by the other to be reminded that you are a fundamentally separate, singular being. That you are your own. Depriving of it was just another means of control.  


Like her own name on the yellow legal pad, his touch was like a mirror now, reflecting her back upon herself so strongly, that it almost blinded her. And she could feel it again - that she was alive in her skin, warm and tingly, and breathing. That she mattered.  


She felt the pearl swell. She heard the shell crack open.

\---

There was something tweaking her butt cheek, the one not resting against his thigh.  


She fumbled around, pushing her hand under her ass, and pulled out the book from under the blanket, the cover folded and bent, but not torn. She smoothed over it, bringing the paper back to its original shape as much as she could. How long has it been since she casually held a book in her hands? Not thoughtlessly, like before, on the bench? Not to check words for a game of Scrabble? Not to fulfill Waterford’s need for a sick thrill when he allowed her to pick a different book from the bookshelf?  


She drew her legs to her, resting the book on her bare thighs, and opened it. Stared. Started reading. “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”  


Was this his plan all along? To hide the book, so she could find it and decide if she wanted to read it or not? Without making her feel like he was allowing her?  


She thought it was.  


She kept on reading, her mind swimming in the heavy language, thick and sultry like the humid air of what she imagined Colombian summers were filled with. The steady rise and fall of his chest cradled her, inevitably lulling her into shallow slumber. Her dream blended Florentino Ariza and Nick together, lending the main character Nick’s face, his full head of hair, and producing an image of this hybrid, who, in the heat of high noon, shoveled something that wasn't gravel, something that was whiter and slicker, like steaming pebbles of dry ice. His skin was streaked with glistening trails of sweat trickling down the muscles of his arms, gathering in dark pools under his armpits, in the fabric of his tight shirt.  


“Going shopping, June?” he asked. How did he know her name? He had some _cojones_ to say it aloud, she thought.  


“June?” Her name rumbled in Nick’s chest and her mind resurfaced in reality. “Wanna lie down?”  


“Say that again,” she whispered.  


“June,” he repeated, his voice deeper, vibrating inside him, resonating through her. She was alive in there, inside him, when he spoke her name. She filled his lungs, crawled up his trachea, quivered in his vocal cords, pulled on the muscles of his tongue and lips.  


She was alive and her name was June.  


He said it again, into the crook of her neck. She slid the book off her lap and took his hand in hers, moving them together underneath the flimsy fabric of her shorts and the thicker cotton cloth of her panties.  


“June?” he whispered hesitantly, even though his breath was still hot. His fingers curled away in caution underneath hers, but she smoothed them down. She dove their hands deeper still, until he encountered the silky byproduct of her dream and of the way he said her name, and he marked his discovery with a gasp.  


She knew he wouldn’t mind it, her showing him the way - there was no overblown ego to tiptoe around. His fingers relaxed and she moved them up and down between her folds, setting pace and pressure, showing him the hot little swirls around the throbbing peak of her arousal, how she liked the sweeps right over it, the intensity of the flicks.  


He took over then, listening, reading her reaction, and bringing his own flavor to the mix. The muscles of his forearm danced underneath his skin when his finger dove deeper every now and then, skidding along her edge, his touch barely there, then bold again, pushing confidently against tissue and muscle, but never daring to slip inside. Was he cautious, or was he just teasing her? Either way, he was pushing her further into oblivion, coaxing louder sounds out of her than she intended to make. As if one could control that aspect. Or maybe, maybe... he was just that talented.  


With one hand, she was grasping his arm that held her tight against him, because at one point, she started to slide down. With the other, she kneaded his thigh just above his knee, which he bent and brought up sometime she didn’t notice. And he was panting with her, gasping, his mouth latching onto the skin of her neck and shoulder.  


Then he switched his finger and the other one was like flint, sending bursts of sparks all around her. Her hips bucked under his hand and she was there, twitching and contracting, her whole body flooded with hot, dazzling waves.  


And then he did something she hasn’t shown him, but what she used to do herself, before. He pushed the whole palm of his hand against her, cupping her, holding her. This gesture was like a cherry on top, making her feel... safe? Not safe as in actively protected, but safe as in calm, content.  


Yeah, in that moment, being as vulnerable as one could be, she felt safe with him here. The trust they were so very cautious with giving each other now filled the tight space between them, tinted the air, slowed down their breaths.  


But here lay the crux of it. That’s why she should’ve left before. Because now she wanted more. The other night was supposed to be a one-time thing. It was supposed to make her feel in control again, invincible even, just one more time. She wanted to know if she still had it insider her, or if it was another thing they took away from her. And when she left, closing his door behind her, it was supposed to be a sharp cut, a definite end. She was supposed to be in control of that, too.  


Yet here she was, and now she couldn’t live without getting more. More of the trust. More of the feeling safe. More of his fingers, his skin, his eyes on her. More of the way she felt when he was around. Like taking a deep, calming breath. Like she wasn’t see-through, _a glass human._ She realized she had no energy to dismiss this, whatever it was between them, or to implement the self-control the way Gilead taught her. She was too close to starvation. Because it wasn’t just that he felt good. It was because he felt right. She was still sane enough to recognize the difference.  


_What else is there to live for?_  


Silly, silly girl.  


There’s no love in the time of Gilead, not now, not in half a century. It wasn’t love what she felt, anyway. Not happiness, either. Not the way that she used to, before. But something was there. She had _feelings_ for him, that’s what you said before. She could admit that. They were multiple and they were like threads, balled up and tied into a thick little knot, which resided right under her sternum. She didn’t dare to pull at them, let any of threads unravel. She preferred to leave them like that, undefined. She could admit that, too.  


She turned in his arms, his hand slipping away from her, and there was something shy in his eyes, something honest.  


Was he thinking the same thing? Feeling the same, undefined _feelings_?  


In a reflex, surprised by his raw expression, she ignored it. Or maybe, in that instant, she was terrified. Terrified of the possibility that this could be more than what she intended it to be. Quickly, she dismissed that, too. There was only the here and now, his body and hers coming alive when they touched. She pushed herself up and kissed him fiercely. He didn’t respond right away as if startled himself, but then his lips were moving over hers with the same passion as they did that other night, and the day before, in the hallway.  


She believed he understood and made his decision - if the one thing was out of the question, at least they had this.  


He moved closer to her, pushing his arm under her clothes and tightly around her waist, his fingers still a little sticky with her arousal, and pulled her further down the bed until they were both fully lying down, facing each other.  


It was him who undressed her this time. She liked watching him do that, how his gaze went to where his fingers touched her, as though he wanted to make sure that it was a real body, her body, he was touching. He then grabbed the back of his t-shirt and tugged it over his head, and she reached for the button of his pants, opened it, pushed the fabric off his little ass. He hooked his thumb under the waistband of his boxer shorts and pulled his clothes down his legs.  


She realized she‘s never fully seen him, even though he's been inside her three times already. She's felt him over the fabric of his boxers once, caught a glimpse here and there, but that was pretty much it. She looked down now at where the shiny top of his head bobbed against his stomach, leaning slightly to his right, towards that little hollow where the honey-colored skin dipped before the edge of the hipbone pushed it back up.  


It still tickled her sometimes, the fact that men ran around with that extra piece of flesh between their legs, this mutated, underdeveloped extremity, a product of some cataclysmic evolutionary leap, which caught on by mistake. But when she wrapped her fingers around it, it felt neither silly, nor random.  


He stifled a grunt, his whole face scrunching up, and he sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, clearly surprised by her touch. She moved her fingers lightly over the delicate skin, feeling his weight in her palm. He was slightly on the thicker side, which she kind of knew already, his girth distributed evenly throughout his length. She moved her hand carefully up and down, slowly tightening her grip. What sick turn of events led to something so vulnerable become the prerequisite of power, she wondered.  


If he's ever believed to have any kind of superiority because of this, which she doubted, he easily and willingly surrendered it now. His face started to relax, his features smoothing out with the pleasure she was giving him, only the little crack between his eyebrows persisted. His eyes were closed, his lashes, which she noticed now grew in two different directions, rested against the skin of his cheeks, his jaw slack, his nostrils flaring out with slow, heavy exhales when she gently moved her fist down his length. His otherwise busy hands were still now, one resting on the blanket between them, the other barely there on her hip. He looked like his senses were either shut off, or focused on that one particular point of connection.  


It struck her again how beautiful he was with those thick, dark eyebrows, the pearly shimmering lips, the excellent skin which looked like it never needed moisturizer, and the little specks of melanin dotting his face, as if someone took a brush dipped in paint and brushed down the hairs in one quick motion, sending a fine mist of dark droplets against his face.  


Hooking her leg over his hip, she pulled him closer, waking him from his trance. His eyelids barely cracked open when he moved to her. She was still able to catch a glimpse of his eyes, glassy and inebriated, and his tea-flavored kiss felt just as heavy, and intense, and deep. The realization that she had that effect on him sent a hot, tingling flash through her body. It crashed with a burning blush against her cheeks and a fresh surge of wetness between her legs. And then she felt him there.  


He broke off the kiss to moan, a sound she’s never heard him make before. She was insanely wet and swollen, and he glided effortlessly back and forth between her folds, grazing her clit with every upward movement, until she jolted her hips and let him slide right in, unable to take it any longer.  


Even though there was no need for it, he was careful pushing deeper inside her. His face was flushed, his eyes honest and bare, and something changed in his expression, something opened up before her. She stared at him, not blinking, and he stared back until he filled her completely. Locking her hips tightly against his, he adjusted, pushing one leg between hers, tilting her more towards the mattress, before he started moving again. He looked down to where he disappeared inside her, his jaw pushed out, his breaths labored and thick, and then he rested his forehead against her chest, right where it fit under her chin, speeding up his hips.  


It looked like he wouldn’t last long, the way he was driving into her, and she wanted him to lose it before she did, even though her own finish line felt within reach already. It turned out she liked him like that, entranced, overwhelmed, barely keeping it together.  


Suddenly, he stopped. Slowly, he pushed himself up on one forearm, the other hand loosening its grip on her hip, caressing over the swell of her ass and down her thigh. He moved closer to her again, eyelids heavy with want, but his eyes glittered with something else.  


She thought he maybe needed to restrain himself, take a breath before he continued, but he was too still for that, too deliberate. He buzzed inside her with ghostly strokes, like an afterimage but of a movement, even though he pulled out and was barely touching her.  


She thought he was teasing again, so she swayed her hips forward, trying to capture him again, but she barely managed to make the tip slide in. She tried again, biting down on her lip, and she saw a warm little smirk dance on his lips. One blink of an eye and it was gone.  


There was one other option, one other reason for what he was doing. His whole body hummed like a power station, his eyes glittered still, but she knew he was nowhere near being the clumsy mess she took him to be, at least not anymore. His gaze pulled her in, shy and honest again, and... and what? Her chest tightened.  


It seemed like in that moment, he couldn’t really control it, or he didn’t want to anymore, and she couldn’t hold it against him. She was aware of it, too, this presence, this... weight in the space between them, the gentle tug. She knew that tug. It was precisely the thing that made him feel _right_. But it seemed like for once, in this odd department, her survival muscle was better trained than his. She was better at ignoring that feeling.  


And didn’t they agree upon that already, however unspoken the agreement was? They only had this. Wanting more would be stupid. A suicide.  


But wasn't _this_ a suicide already? A death wish?  


She pushed on his shoulder, lifting herself up, flipping him onto his back and sliding down onto him in one quick motion. She sped up, grinding down with long, intense pulses, and there was a sweet taste on her tongue. His chest felt warm and full of life when it moved rhythmically underneath her palms, his ribs rippling beneath her fingertips as he swayed with her, caressing her flanks and hips, watching her with such raw intensity she could almost feel his gaze roaming over her skin. His thumb dipped deeper to where their bodies met, but she moved his hand away.  


When she bent over him, he pulled the hair clip from her bun, letting her hair cascade around her face in a blonde waterfall. His hands were on her breasts, on the small of her back, in her hair, on her cheek, bringing her down to his lips, his tongue hot and rough against hers. She knew she was coming undone just as fast as he was.  


She pulled back, sitting up again when he closed his eyes and pushed his head back against the pillow, leaving her free to stare unabashedly at his body, and she was immediately transfixed with the way his muscles tightened and relaxed underneath his skin.  


For a moment, it became utterly clear to her that there was a whole other human beneath her - flesh and bones and blood and electricity wrapped up tightly in veiny skin. A whole other mind, a whole other life with its own cruel past - because even if it was beautiful, it was also always cruel - a whole other person, choosing to be here, with her.  


What finally put her over the edge was the sight of the firm muscles of his neck and throat, the defined lines and deep grooves not visible in normal circumstances, now strained with the tension of his imminent release. In the middle of them, his Adam’s apple pushed against the stretched, fine skin in tandem with his grunts, so sharp and quick it looked like it could rip the surface at any moment. She wanted to bite down onto it or kiss it at least, but then the lightning finally struck her, its energy stretching the muscles of her back, sending her head back and deep between her shoulders. He gripped her wrists and she grabbed his, finding balance when his whole body started contracting underneath hers, and it was her holding him steady in the end.

\---

She sat down on the cold lip of the toilet seat, her legs rubbery and trembling from exertion, her body starting to shiver from the drop in temperature and the adrenaline plummeting. Or was it serotonin? One way or the other, something was plummeting, she could feel the pull of it as though there was a sinkhole inside her. She put on her sweatshirt quickly - she stepped onto it when she left the bed, one of her feet landing in the sleeve like in a sock, the other in her shorts. She took both items with her.  


The darkness framed by the bathroom window pulled her in, diverting her thoughts as the last drops of him lazily left her body. A couple of months ago, she had her routine: shopping, holding her mouth shut, Ceremony, menstruation, repeat. She stuck to the rules and survived one month at a time. Now everything was endlessly more fucked up, the way she’d never thought possible: the psycho Commander, the sadistic Wife, OfGlen, Mayday. The trade. And him. She would’ve never thought there would be a “him.” Surely not in this place. The Four Horsemen arriving would’ve been more plausible.  


So where was this sense of familiarity coming from? The sense of knowing him already, not by sight precisely, but more by his energy. Like someone you were always aware was there, living their life in the periphery of your own, who sensed your presence just as much as you did theirs, but never attempted any kind of contact. Like that weird little story she's read once about a woman and a man falling endlessly through the universe on almost perfectly aligned trajectories, tilted just by a fraction towards each other, to meet someday but not in hundreds of thousands of years. One day, the trajectories were to cross but then go their separate ways again. Unless the woman and the man stretched out their arms and caught each other. Has she read that in _Cosmicomics_? She couldn’t remember anymore.  


If they were like that couple, then Gilead was like a prism, which bent their trajectories towards each other. Without Gilead, they probably wouldn't have met in this lifetime. Because of Gilead, they meet now. And somehow, they recognize each other from the fall. They recognize the presence of the other who’s always been there. And they catch each other. Now.  


_Are you happy?_  


She brushed away the hot tear that slid down her cheek. It didn’t matter anyway.  


She waddled a long piece of toilet paper around her hand, wetted it with warm water in the sink, and cleaned herself up. There was a little square mirror pushed behind the sink faucet, where she assumed he looked at himself while shaving. Her eyes were losing focus on her own face time and again when she stood before it, like the camera in her iPhone used to blur and strain in unfavorable lighting conditions. How silly to think of technology like that. She washed her face with cold water and looked again. Her eyes focused and stayed that way. She combed through her hair with wet fingers, put on her shorts, and left the bathroom.  


He straightened up again. The remaining pieces of her underwear were neatly put away on the armchair by the closet door, which stood ajar. His t-shirt was rolled into a ball and thrown on top of the laundry basket. There was a glass of water next the book and her hair clip on the nightstand on her side of the bed. _Her_ side of the bed? Nuh-uh, Freud, not today, she thought. On the side of the bed she occupied today, she corrected herself.  


It wasn’t just the apartment that was always so neat. From the very beginning, she noticed his notoriously clean, trimmed nails, the always fresh, pressed shirts, the smooth shave, the hair a bit wild but never greasy. His easy neatness was one of the reasons she used to imagine him touching her. Yeah, she found him attractive. Tingling-in-the-belly attractive, actually. And with all the physical work he was doing around the house, she couldn’t remember one instance when he stank like a locker room. It always smelled fresh, his sweat, warm and earthy, with a hint of smoke or motor oil, and soap. Always soap.  


Now there was this heady sweetness hanging in the air and nestling between the fibers of the bedsheets, a one of a kind, distinctive haze of their lovemaking. It made her think of papaya and strangely, cottage cheese. She wanted to lay down next to him and envelop herself in it. He was under the covers on his back, one arm thrown across his eyes, the other resting beside him on the blanket. He looked like he was asleep.  


She sat down on the edge of the bed, watching him. In this light, his skin looked like something darker than the usual honey. She thought, more like the Earl Grey they were drinking before. She wondered about the unique genetic makeup that created him, about all the beautiful people that came before him. Her skin was blank and simple, like a sheet of paper next to his. Her own version of a tabula rasa, where only his fingers were capable of leaving a mark, of moving upon it in enchanting contrast.  


A realization twitched in her stomach. There won’t be any hand-holding, no stolen kisses, not even an honest smile shared in public. Silly, small, beautiful things. They won’t happen here.  


She wondered how easily she would’ve told him her name before, if their trajectories had crossed and they'd met in college, for instance. He would’ve walked over to her for whatever reason, or maybe she would’ve, and after some polite small talk - she knew he wouldn’t have just blatantly hit on her - she would’ve just introduced herself, maybe shaken his hand or clinked necks of chilled beer bottles. Would he have said her name the same way he did today? And if they'd gone out a couple of times and she'd invited him over after a movie date or batting cages - she thought he might’ve liked that before - would it have felt just as electrifying?  


But they could hold hands now, in here. As silly and simple as this once felt, she wanted it again. Less than five minutes ago, she told herself it didn’t matter how she felt. Ten minutes earlier, she felt like she could’ve died if he didn’t touch her fast enough. Before that, she has almost convinced herself to leave. She told herself all kinds of bullshit tonight, didn’t she?  


But it wasn’t all bullshit now, was it.  


Sometimes she wished they’ve succeeded - the Aunts, the Commanders, the Wives. She wished they’ve really succeeded in numbing her, brainwashing her, turning her into a puppet. She wouldn’t still be here then, over three years in, fully aware, fully capable of thinking and imagining. She wouldn’t be sitting here, desiring.  


She slid under the covers beside him, lacing her fingers with his, and her mind slowed down for a moment. He stirred awake, one eye peeking from under his arm, and then he smiled. A wide, warm, honest smile. She returned it. There you go, she thought. It wasn’t in public, but it was shared nonetheless. Maybe they’ll even have opportunities to steal kisses - the darkness here was abundant.  


“Have you ever been to batting cages?” she asked, taking the softness in his eyes as a sign of invitation.  


“What?” he chuckled, and she wanted to hear it again and again.  


“Batting cages,” she repeated. “You don’t seem like a football fan. Basketball, maybe.”  


“I played softball in high school for a while, why?”  


“Did you take your dates to batting cages? Or were you the more traditional dinner-and-movies kind of guy?”  


He turned away, covering his eyes again. His lips shrunk to a thin line before he spoke. “I’ve been to batting cages a couple of times. I think once on a date, too, if that’s what you’d wanna call an awkward pubescent outing. Later on... there were not many dates to be had.”  


Not for the first time, she tried to figure out how old he was. When there were not many dates after he finished high school, and he didn’t mention college... and with three years of Gilead and the year before that, when the harsh restrictions started, he could be as young as twenty-three, which she was sure he wasn’t. But he wasn’t her age, either. She opened her mouth to ask but then faltered when she noticed his tensed jaw, the muscle there jumping nervously.  


Turning away from him, she looked up at the ceiling where the beams met in the highest point of the roof, her own body tensing up. When he squeezed her hand, she closed her eyes, taking a long, deep breath, and squeezed back. It was ok, talking about the past could be fucking difficult, she got that. There was some evident hurt in him, but she felt like asking about it could be too much right now. She just wanted to lay there, hold his hand, and let the tension pass. He drew little circles on the fleshy base of her thumb and she tried to let his caresses relax her, but her stubborn body refused.  


“I feel like having a cigarette,” she said after a while, hoping it could take the unexpected edge off.  


“I don’t smoke inside,” he answered quietly.  


“Oh.” She closed her eyes again.  


She felt his gaze on her but didn’t react, too busy trying to stop the tears that rushed to her eyes. She didn’t know why, exactly. The mattress dipped underneath her and cool air hit her body when he moved away. She watched him shuffle to the dark kitchen, where he took another glass and filled it half-full with water.  


On his way back, he stopped by the table to pick up the pack. The gauzy light of the dim lamps enveloped his back, casting a warm shadow down the middle, down that straight line which started high between his shoulder blades and disappeared under the waistband of his underwear, where it separated the cheeks of his bottom. And just like that, she wanted him again. Softly now. Like his kiss on her forehead. Like his warm palm on her face. Even more when he stopped by the edge of the bed and lit the cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame illuminating his face.  


She sat up, taking it from him, and drew her legs to her as he cracked a window and sat down on the edge of the bed, looking down at his hands. She smoked in silence, taking long drags, letting the hot smoke fill her lungs, then extended her arm to him, a question etched in her eyebrow. He took the cigarette from her, his fingers touching hers.  


“Were you a cigarette-after-sex girl? Before?” he asked with a smoky exhale, not looking at her.  


“No,” she answered quietly. “I liked the band, though.”  


“The band?”  


“ _Cigarettes after sex_. They made uhm, dream-pop.”  


“Ah.”  


“That’s not why I’m here, you know,” she said after a beat, the words once again coming out of her mouth of their own volition.  


“I uhm... I didn’t mean to imply that you uhm... I didn’t mean it like that.” He looked up at her. “I’m sorry.”  


It seemed like the past itself didn’t want to be talked about. Well, fuck this.  


“You know, when I think about it now... I could have had sex much more often than I actually did,” she said with a soft smirk when she took the cigarette from him. She held it at her lips when she spoke again. “I went on plenty of dates in college, but... but it was never about that, you know. People around me were pretty free with their bodies, which was totally fine, of course. But casual hookups were never really my thing. I always needed more than a grain of attraction and a couple of Coronas for it to work.” She sucked on the cigarette and tipped the ashes into the glass he set between them before she continued.  


“What cost me everything was uhm... I fell in love with someone who was already married. That was my sin. Falling in love and letting that feeling guide me.” She smoked again, staring blankly into the distance as if the apartment had no walls. She looked into the woods, the picture before her shaky and blurred, her heart pounding in her chest, Hannah heavy in her arms. Then the shots echoed around her.  


“He was killed and our daughter... our daughter was ripped away straight from my arms... She was wearing her red plaid jacket that day, I remember it distinctly. Maybe if it was green or brown like mine was or... if I ran faster...” she trailed off. So many fucking ifs. Too many.  


“I’m so sorry,” he said barely above a whisper.  


She thought of a movie she saw a long time ago, and she thought of it not because it was some earth-shattering experience, but because of a song she associated with it almost exclusively. It was a raw beat and a female voice chanting, “Suckin' on my titties like you wanted me, Callin’ me, all the time like a blondie.” And it wasn’t this deep line precisely why she remembered the song, it was the title she googled afterward - _Fuck the pain away_.  


Looking at him now, in that precise moment in time, that’s what she wanted. Not softly anymore. She knew how much he desired her still, she just did. She wanted him to fuck this all away, to let him override every circuit of her brain with his want and make her forget, just for a moment, the unbearable pressure which pulsed inside her every time the image of Hannah fluttered before her eyes, like a weak broadcast from beyond. From beyond her reality. From beyond her grasp.  


There were days when she let the pain full on in, but not tonight. Tonight, she needed him to pour his energy into her to help her cope with the loss as it tore at the gaping hole inside her. Like when you pick at a nicked skin around your fingernail and pull too far, causing a bigger rip and fresh blood to come out of the wound. Only more so. Endlessly amplified. _Black Swan_ on her heart.  


“What are you in for?” she asked, handing him the last of the cigarette, pain burning in her chest. She needed a distraction, immediately. She didn’t even realize what she was saying until her words drifted back to her.  


He scoffed to himself and slowly pushed the filter between his lips, resting his fingertips right beside his mouth, and took a long drag. He held the smoke in his lungs. “Juvenile naivety,” he answered before he exhaled, his head bobbing in the slightest nod. “Nothing noble.”  


Because of the way he took another drag of the cigarette, of how his eyelids fluttered shut, she knew there was a thick plenitude of pain inside him, pain she knew nothing about. Some different loss defined him, though. There was less anger to it, but it was more solid. It wasn’t a rip, but a bulging malignity slowly strangling his heart. Even though she found herself afraid to look, the evidence was suddenly there, woven into the subtle tremor of his lips, the deep inhale, the vacant, downward gaze when his eyes finally cracked open.  


He needed something different, she thought. Little by little, he was showing her tiny cracks in his congealed, sober exterior, which exposed the deeper layers of his character, of his needs and desires, which moved like lava beneath the crust. What she saw now was that he needed to supply, to give himself and see that he was wanted on some primal, basic level. It was his way of temporarily negating his pain, this self-doubt she could so evidently see in him now. And how deep it ran. That’s why he asked her what he did.  


She wondered for a moment if she maybe said too much, left too much open to interpretation. Because he was so desperate to give.  


But weren’t they perfect together that way?  


Perfectly fucked up.  


She skimmed her fingers over the knuckles of his hand which rested on the sheets, and his reaction was immediate, as if her need skipped like an electric signal from her nerve ends to his. He threw the cigarette butt into the glass and put it away on the nightstand, his thumb grasping her little finger.  


Before she was able to say anything else, his lips were on hers, hot and convincing, and she melted into his kiss.  


In a matter of minutes, even seconds maybe, she was naked again, wet and wanting, her fingers trembling for his skin. He was all over her, his touch all-consuming, his mouth sucking every rational thought from her brain, bringing her exactly where she wanted to be - floating weightlessly inside bright, cottony nothingness. And then he was inside her, solid and demanding attention, and so incredibly wonderful she wouldn’t have thought a dick could make her feel that way.  


There was no talking, there never was. It was just their bodies, communicating in a way her head couldn’t really follow. It was simpler than language, faster than her thoughts. Only action and reaction, a give and take, straightforward, primal. Definite. No underlying meaning, no room for interpretation. No need for it, either.  


He was passionate, quick, attentive. Her body guided him, her stifled moans showed the way, and then she was flying, rippling around him, squeezing with feral intensity. She grasped the flesh of his hips, his butt cheeks, kneading, encouraging his release, and like every other time, he followed right behind her. Sneaking his hand under her ass, he pushed in and out with short, fervent strokes as if all along, he was just waiting for her sign to let himself go. To allow himself to feel. As if this was something he always needed to know he deserved.  


His completion was quiet, signified by gentle grunts, which rode on top of his hitched breaths, but then kept getting caught in his throat. His mouth came down onto her earlobe, the subsiding waves of his release mirrored in his long, humid breaths and the gentle sway of his body, and then he sank down on top of her. She took him in, wrapping her legs and arms tightly around him, cradling him with her whole body, surprised by the significant weight of his slender frame. Softly, she kissed his cheek.  


A couple of months earlier, after the first Ceremony, she lay in her bed upstairs, feeling repulsed and nauseated when the Commander’s cum trickled out of her. The sensation of the warm seed leaving her body was very much similar now, but the feeling accompanying it was fundamentally different.  


Her hand wandered into his hair, stirring his scent from between the curls, which tickled her nostrils, and his warm smell filled her lungs. She wondered if being held meant as much to him as it did to her. Did he feel safe? Did he feel like he mattered? She hoped that he did because it mattered to her. To hold him.  


What she told him before was true – for her, it was never so much about the physical. Because nobody dies from lack of sex. What they were doing here wasn’t comfort the way she thought it was - she wasn’t here just because it felt good, or because she didn't want to be alone. She wanted to believe this, but it wasn’t even true when she knocked on his door the first time.  


She felt a thread loosen from the knot in her chest. It unraveled with a soft, quiet rustle, like a ripe petal breaking off a flower.  


He mattered to her. It was as simple as that.


End file.
